To Be, Not To Be Seen - The Mystery of Swedish Business

By Jerry Hagstrom, The George Washington University Press | Timbro, 2001.

From Timbro: The first comprehensive history of Swedish business in English – from the Swedish peasant pulling iron ore out of the bogs in prehistoric times to the Viking era, the Hanseatic League, the timber and mining age and the creation of the modern firms.

Sweden is known for fine products but its business community is little understood in other countries. This books explodes the worldwide misperception that Swedish business is state-run.

American journalist and author Jerry Hagstrom writes that Swedish business deserves its own special place in the history of world capitalism. Sweden, he says, rose to prosperity as the original export-driven small country economy – nearly 100 years before the Asian tigers were credited with that approach.

Mr. Hagstrom writes that Swedish companies have remained private throughout the Social Democratic era, that Swedish business is less government-controlled than in the rest of Europe and that Swedish business has more in common with U.S. business than with its neighbours.

Sweden’s deep entrepreneurial instincts can be seen today, Mr. Hagstrom writes, in a new wave of high tech and information technology firms that make Sweden the most wired country in Europe and, by some accounts in the world.

Beyond Reagan – The New Landscape of American Politics

By Jerry Hagstrom, 320 pages, W. W. Norton & Co. Inc., 1988.

From Publishers Weekly: Who is better off in the eighth year of the Conservative revolution, who is worse off, and why? Hagstrom (coauthor of The Book of America) explains how President Reagan's re-armament program overwhelmed his budget-balancing plans, increased the national debt and caused drastic disparities between the country's seven regions. California "has continued on its road to domination of American politics and cultural life" and the 1980s have reaffirmed the Mid-Atlantic as "the most prosperous, stable and diversified region," but the Reagan years "have been crueller to the Great Lakes states than any other region in the country." The book focuses on a wide variety of ongoing issues: the "dumbing down" of school textbooks, municipal corruption and the increasing numbers of homeless citizens. Hagstrom provides background material on the [then] current Presidential hopefuls, assessing, for instance, Michael Dukakis's contribution to the "economic miracle" in New England.

From Library Journal: Hagstrom (co-author The Book of America ) makes a region-by-region assessment of the condition of America's states, cities, and countryside in 1988. Though as a major premise of the book he promises to evaluate the impact of Reaganism on the regions, he identifies other factors as defining the important issues, such as economic change, poverty, the environment, energy, education, and urban decay. He emphasizes political/economic issues, criticizing Reaganism from a liberal perspective. Although the title is misleading, the book gives lay readers an informative and revealing picture of regional difficulties and differences.

The Book Of America - Inside Fifty States Today

By Neal R. Pierce and Jerry Hagstrom, W W Norton & Co., Inc., 1983.

The culmination of a multi-year project surveying each of the 50 states of the United States, covering government, politics, business, education, ethnic and minority groups, environmental action and urban affairs. Written with syndicated political columnist Neal R. Pierce, a founder of the National Journal and now chairman of the Citistates Group, a network of writers, speakers and consultants focused on the viability of U.S. and international metropolitan regions.

THE HAGSTROM REPORT is a news service providing original national and international agricultural news to our subscribers. We cover Congressional hearings, markups and press conferences in Washington D.C., and farm meetings throughout the United States.